Greenwood Library
When I first applied to be a student assistant at the Greenwood Library, I was purely doing so to 1) keep myself busy outside of class and 2) make a substantial paycheck to afford food other then the dining hall. I frequented the library almost every night my freshman year, and many of my coworkers can recall me staying anywhere from four to six hours in the library until they closed, and my friends continue to joke me to this day that I live in Greenwood. It was my realization of all of the resources the library had to offer along with past experience of volunteering at a library that motivated me enough to apply for the job. Sure enough, I was hired as a student assistant who worked about ten hours a week, and do everything from shelving and checking out books to processing periodicals and newspapers.
This year saw the greatest amount of hires to Greenwood Library, which honestly made me feel a little nervous at first. I constructed this mental image in my head that work would be noisy and chaotic compared to a 4 or 5 new hires working together in a small group. Instead the twenty strong student assistants broke up into four teams, and my supervisor explained that we would work together in these teams to score more points than other teams by fulfilling projects and expectations of the full-time staff. I was immediately wondering if I made the wrong decision to have a job coupled with five classes and three organizations, but after a few weeks of training together, some of my coworkers soon turned into some of my closest friends. I saw them less an acquaintance coworker and more as a family. The competition aspect still troubled me, but after two or three weeks in I realized that this competition is exactly what drove all of us to work harder and excel as a team. It pushed us to not stay in individual bubbles, but to communicate as to what projects and work we can each do to both win and continue to make Greenwood Library an awesome resource on campus. I soon realized that our boss was preparing us for the competitive workplace we would be entering not even three or four years down the road. Although the incentive were little goodies and huge bags of candy, the principal of working to obtain an award (or paycheck) would continue to be integrated in our lives. I held a job previously back home, but it was Greenwood Library that taught me the real values.
By the end of the year, I no longer saw working at the library as a job, but as a service to the campus. The meager paychecks was not what kept me motivated to work; it was the gradual idea that I was working with the people I love and maintaining a library for students to use and excel in their studies. It was almost in a sense like my way of community service. Whether I checked out books and made personal interactions with patrons or did behind-the-scenes work like inventory (counting each book, CD, and DVD in the library to make sure nothing is missing and everything is in order), I would tell myself that this could be the difference in helping someone who has a genuine interest in research and academia. And I can tell that it did. Believe it or not, many students are not familiar with how a library alphabetizes or categorizes books. I would be one of many assistants who would teach students how to find a book and show them where to find it. This may sound cheesy, but just seeing a sigh of relief or a smile (albeit sad due to imminent research) made me realize I helped in a way.
I will still continue to work at Greenwood Library for the remainder of my time at Longwood, as some of my best experiences have formed there. In the end, I believed I learned how the world will really work (through a fun little incentive program nonetheless) with regards to competition and teamwork, and that positive emotions will trump financials as the biggest indicator of motivation. This opportunity has been one of the most impactful experiences in my life, and I hope it will in turn impact others in the years to come.